Around 1 p.m. EST yesterday, panic spread after the Associated Press (AP) Twitter account announced that US President Barack Obama had been wounded from a series of explosions at the White House. Minutes later, the AP revealed that their account had been hacked.

With 1.9 million followers, the concession of retweets spread like wildfire, reaching the stock market where the Dow lost 130 points within a few minutes before returning to it original level.

The fake tweet read: “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”

The AP quickly announced that their account had been hacked and was suspended yesterday. Following the incident, an FBI investigation is under way. An AP staffer said on his Twitter account that the attack came shortly after a number of AP employees had received a phishing email.

Hacking can have strong implications for a venerable publication like the AP.

“A media publisher conceivably could be sued for negligence if things are published under their name that is not true and if they didn’t take reasonable steps to prevent the erroneous publication of information,” said Nick Economidis to Bloomberg.

So what exactly will a "data editorial" role in Twitter’s media team entail? Back in September 2012, a job ad described the ideal candidate as being able to "create "clear and insightful data-driven case studies" using Twitter’s data for the press, partners, and its own internal communications." Twitter is remaining quiet on the matter of Rogers' appointment, but it can be assumed that his new job will consist in utilising his expertise in the field of data journalism to interpret the dizzying number of tweets that inundate the Twitter network – all this in a format that makes sense to a data-shy public. The most that Rogers revealed in his blog announcement yesterday was that "Twitter has become such an important element in the way we work as journalists. It's impossible to ignore, and increasingly at the heart of every major event, from politics to sport and entertainment. As data editor, I'll be helping to explain how this phenomenon works."

The appointment of a data editor may well be considered the next logical step in Twitter's ever-increasing domination of the news industry. Over the past few years, the real-time communications platform has been dictating the news agenda with growing power and influence, consistently pipping newspapers and websites to the post when it comes to breaking the latest current affairs stories.

It’s not just journalism hatchlings giving this business model a try: Gawker, Forbes and Complex all tie reporters’ paychecks to web traffic, Josh Sternberg of Digiday reported.

Complex’s approach shatters the wall between advertising and editorial: Editors are paid a percentage of the company’s revenue. Their salaries also take into account their sections’ pageviews and social media action, according to Sternberg.

“You want editors understanding the business side and their pains, and vice versa,” Complex CEO Rich Antoniello told Sternberg. “We try to have everyone, not only aware, but have skin in as many games as absolutely possible. When people know the totality of the business and run in the same direction, it makes it more effective.”

Data from Ireland-based startup NewsWhip shows that the most viral stories are not always those curated on page one. Founder Paul Quigley told The Editor’s Weblog that this realization will challenge the mission of some news organizations, as social distribution favors emotionally-charged and unusual stories over traditional news.

As social networks become omnipresent, newspaper front pages are losing their lustre. A Pew Foundation study showed that social networks are now the greatest distributors of news, with 33 percent of young adults accessing news via social networks and only 13 percent through print and web newspapers. With more people sharing stories on Facebook and Twitter, fewer and fewer discover news stories through newspapers’ homepages and front pages. Quigley said this trend will likely be permanent, so news organizations need to learn to adapt a “social edge” to stay relevant.

“If we’ve got a story to tell it’s that social distribution won’t go away,” said Quigley, who will present NewsWhip at WAN-IFRA’s Digital Media Europe conference in London, 15-17 April. “Maybe Facebook or Twitter might go away, but the web of people is going to be how information is going to spread.